Ithaca College

The work of Professor Jerry Mirskin of the Department of Writing is the subject of an essay entitled "The Hard Part Is Knowing What to Say: The Poetry of Jerry Mirskin" by Howard Nelson, which appears in the current issue of The Hollins Critic, a publication of Hollins University. The essay is part of a series that "presents the first serious surveys of the whole bodies of contemporary writers’ work." Other writers whose work has been surveyed include John Engels, Jane Hirshfield, and Edwidge Danticat.

Of Mirskin's three collections of poetry--Picture a Gate Hanging Open and Let that Gate Be the Sun (2002), In Flagrante Delicto (2008), and Crepuscular Non Driveway (2014)--Nelson writes, "The titles of all three collections suggest a certain extravagance of language and gesture, and that quality is indeed part of his repertoire. But in this latest book, it is radical plain-spokenness, the impression of somebody talking as somebody really would talk, that is in the forefront, and the ante of his talent seems raised."